Google Drive to go native on Chrome OS

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Google only recently bestowed Chrome OS with a taskbar and window manager, but there’s another big update in the works. Now that Google Drive has officially launched, work has begun on tightly integrating the cloud storage and sync service with the native Chrome OS filesystem.

The announcement from Google’s Sundar Pichai certainly can’t come as a shock. Since day one, Chrome OS has been squarely focused on connected use. First generation Chromebooks offer only a fraction of the local storage that a Windows or Mac notebook would. Chrome OS is also built to play well with Docs and be easily managed by Google Apps administrators, so providing seamless access to that new storage system seems like a no-brainer.

Will synchronization be supported? In all likelihood, yes. Chrome OS can perform a certain number of offline tasks — the Scratchpad app, for example, provides decent rich text editing and photos can be tweaked — so there’s no reason for Google to make Drive integration online-only. Current Google Drive clients also offer selective sync, and that’s something Chrome OS would definitely need. You wouldn’t want to overload your SSD with data you’ve stored in your Drive that isn’t of any use on your Chromebook, like PSDs, iWork files, or .MKV rips of your favorite Blu-ray discs.

You also won’t have to enable Google Drive support if you don’t want to. According to Pichai, it’ll be an opt-in feature.

Chrome OS will get Google Drive integration starting with version 20, which is currently being served up on the Dev channel. Google Drive has yet to surface in the file manager, but we’ll share some screenshots when it does and let you know how it all works.